alright i'm gonna call it there.
We ended up with a three way tie: congrats emtzalex, Timinou, and me.
Points totals are
hereThe awards in italic were not submitted (i awarded silvers all around, same as how mathdude's compensation points shook out.)
Here's some individual feedback on cards:
Pirate’s Cove and Sunken TreasureBig fan of the incentive to silver flood, plus the fact that the silvers are exiled meaning that there’s a little more control over how many are in your deck. Feels kind of similar to Upgrade in that most often you’ll be turning estates into 3-costs, though obviously worse because you can’t trash coppers. Overall probably not the strongest card, but an interesting one.
My only criticism is that Pirate's cove may be too similar to Upgrade. It still looks like a fun card to play. Since it's no good for trashing Coppers, it might be okay at $4 cost.
Pensioner and CureCreates some unique decisions in that it gives you the Cure if you trash two cards- which happens most often (after the opening) when you already have the Cure. Most frequently I foresee this being used to trade a Curse for a Copper and a 4-cost while cursing- not bad for its price, but a little bit clunky. I don’t love how, like Fool, it becomes both weaker and less interesting if only one player goes for it and gets its artifact permanently; I think a bigger incentive to take the Cure might be interesting. It’s definitely a neat card, though, and I like how (like Old Witch) it bundles junking and trashing into one card.
Pensioner is a valiant attempt at making good use of Cure, but I still don't think Cure is worth having an artifact for. (Arsenic and Old Lace is a fun movie though)
Cure is not the easiest Artifact to design a card for, considering you are swapping out one junk card for two slightly better junk cards. I think Pensioner does a good job of getting mileage out of the extra Estate and Copper that you would get with Cure, and if you don't trash both an Estate and a Copper with it, you get to Curse your opponents. Pensioner looks better than vanilla Remodel early in the game, although Pensioner will pretty much be a dead card once the Curses run out.
Construction Site and ConcussedThis feels too weak for its price, especially compared to Market, which is not a power card overall. The problem is that peddler variants tend to be cards that you want to stack, and this card kills that function in one way or another. Either you’re not getting the necessary +Action, or it becomes (barring handsize attacks and disappearing coin) a +buy Oasis. I think it’s definitely an interesting card, and might be tweaked into something cool if there were a different return condition for Concussed or if it was the +coin rather than the +action that was conditional.
Construction Site looks like a very spammable $4-cost Market, considering that you would only take Concussed once so each subsequent play of Construction Site is as good as a Market. I don't think the penalty with Concussed is that scary and so I'm not sure it's the best penalty to go with Construction Site.
Troll+AmuletThis seems very situational, requiring you to buy two copies of a $5 (which doesn't do very much for you), and hope you are able to play one copy, then--before the other player plays even one copy--play both copies in one hand. It could do more in games with other cards that distribute hexes, or games with more than two players, but still, that's a big gap.
Architect+Prepared Probably useful but there's such a maze of text, and numbers, and cards coming and going, that it's hard to get a intuitive feel for when/whether I'd want to play it.
Pioneers+Expansionist Looks like it should allow for all sorts of fun tricks.
Wraith & BlindedThis looks like it might be fun until you realized probably nothing you want to stay on your Exile mat is going to stay there long. Then sometimes you might not want to play Wraith because the only things on the other players' mats are Actions they will want back, and I don't think that's how the card is intended to play. I like the idea though. It'd probably work better on a card that only did its attack sometimes.
I really like blinded, and Wraith implements this in a fun way
Fixer + Caught in the ActI don't think Fixer on its own would work as a card as it would be far too monolithic, but Caught in the Act is a good counter-balance. That said, Fixer is strictly better than Market, considering it can be played as one without any penalty, but gives you plenty of additional options if needed.
Clever Planner + shortsighted Bit of a flavour mismatch; CP seems like a less stackable Cargo Ship, and while it's a nice answer to shortsighted if you happen to time it, it doesn't honestly feel that impactful.
Industrious Witch + hidden pocket Nice idea, but the combo doesn't really gel for me; i fear industrious witch might be a little too versatile.
Thank you all for participating. This was a lot of fun and an interesting experiment.
Without further ado, Mahowrath, take it away on fan mechanic contest #25